BlackBerry PlayBook Beats Competing Tablets in Security, Study Finds

BlackBerry has become the staple point for secure mobile computing. Recently, a study took the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and pitted it against Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. As you might have guessed, the BlackBerry PlayBook was the victor.

In the study by Context Information Security, they concluded the Samsung Galaxy Tab was the least enterprise-ready of the trio. While the iPad and BlackBerry PlayBook performed better, both of their desktop software fails to encrypt backups by default. However, the BlackBerry PlayBook was found to provide good separation between personal and work data. This is becoming increasingly important as the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend grows in popularity.

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The iPad has robust data protection and damage limitation facilities. However, its security shortcomings include the regularity of new jailbreak attacks, and ineffective disk encryption unless a strong passcode policy is applied. And although the iPad’s disk encryption scheme is well designed, the default behaviour for iTunes backups is to store files in clear text, obviously unacceptable for the storage of potentially sensitive corporate data. Much the same back-up approach is adopted with the BlackBerry PlayBook.

“It is difficult to ignore the growing presence of tablet computers in the home and workplace offering a blend of productivity, connectivity and physical freedom which has never been achieved before,” Jonathan Roach, principal consultant at Context and author of the report, said. “The device format is perfect for social networking and creating and sharing documents, presentations and other content on-the-fly, but the same characteristics also present tough security challenges for organisations. Our research suggests that most tablet manufacturers still have a way to go before their products can deliver the high levels of security required for use in most corporate enterprises.”

You can view Context Information Security’s full report, entitled Tablets – A Hard Pill to Swallow available here.